"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Ishmael! It is good to be ill when one is so kindly cared for. Isn't there a gale, sir?"
"Yes, Morris, a magnificent one! The old enemies, wind and sea, are in their most heroic moods, and are engaged in a pitched battle. This poor ship, like a neutral power, is suffering somewhat from the assaults of both."
"I think I will go and look on that battlefield," smiled the professor, trying to rise.
Ishmael helped him, and when he was dressed gave him his arm and took him up on deck, at the same time requesting one of the second- cabin stewards to follow with a rug and cushion.
This man, wondering at the affectionate attention paid by the stately young gentleman to his sick servant, followed them up and made the professor a pallet near the wheel-house, on the deck.
When, with the assistance of the steward, Ishmael had made his old retainer comfortable, he placed himself with his shoulders against the back of the wheel-house to steady himself, for the ship was rolling terribly, and he stood gazing forth upon the stormy surface of the sea.
A magnificent scene! The whole ocean, from the central speck on which he stood to the vast, vanishing circle of the horizon, seemed one boundless, boiling caldron. Millions of waves were simultaneously leaping in thunder from the abyss and rearing themselves into blue mountain peaks, capped with white foam, and sparkling in the sunlight for a moment, to be swallowed up in the darkness of the roaring deep the next. A lashing, tossing, heaving, foaming, glancing rise and fall of liquid mountains and valleys, awful, but ravishing, to look on.
Ishmael stood leaning against the wheel-house, with his arms folded and his eyes gazing out at sea. His whole soul was exalted to reverence and worship, and he murmured within himself:
"It is the Lord that commandeth the waters; it is the glorious God that maketh the thunder!
"It is the Lord that ruleth the sea; the voice of the Lord is mighty in operation; the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice!"